A Bit More Bing: Bing's New Mobile Homepage at m.bing.com
The last couple of days have been some busy ones for the Bing team. Something for everyone.
Last night we posted about Bing's updated and enhanced iPhone app that includes a barcode-scanner to do some comparison pricing and shopping. We would love to see OCLC and MSFT get together and allow users to scan for books to determine if a local library has the title. You can now do book scanning and then search WorldCat with the RedLaser (now a part of eBay and a free app) and pic2shop (also a free app) to see what local libraries have the title.
We also posted about many new and enhanced features for the primary Bing.com web site. Absolutely worth a look if for no other reason (there are many however) to see some creative and useful web search development going on at Microsoft. All of our Bing material can be found here. If you want a quick tour we also have a link to the Discover Bing web tour.
Overall, some very impressive releases.
But that's not all folks.
Today, Bing launched an enhanced and updated mobile site at m.bing.com. It will work on several smartphone browsers. Specifically, Windows phones, iPhone, Android, Palm, Kin, or Zune HD. Results pages also look great. Very easy on the eyes.
The main search categories (aka verticals) are:
+ Local
+ Maps
+ Directions (Big Fans as We Mentioned Last Night)
+ Movies (with Trailers to View on Your Phone)
+ Weather
+ Favorites (Save Info Like an Address or Phone Number From Business Info Pages)
Other features include auto location detection (assuming your GPS is on); enhanced details with local listings including parking info (even a local burrito place in shopping center has parking info), price, cuisine, and ratings.
One of our favorite enhancements is around local search. When you’re out and about and need to find somewhere to go, you probably want to search near where you are at that moment. The new Local section on m.bing.com does just that. Bing shows you a list of suggestions based their popularity, your current location, and even the time of day so at 9:00 AM you might see a coffee house rather than a bar. You can choose the radius for your search, narrowing to .5 miles for congested areas or when you’re walking instead of driving.
See Also: Since We Have the Opportunity, We're Going to Mention Microsoft Academic Search Another Time. It Went Live Last Fall and Appears to Continue to Move Forward. Make Sure to Take a Look. Here's Our Overview from the Day It Launched along with a Review from January. Don't Confuse This Database with the Mediocre (at Best) Microsoft Live Academic. This is Already Much Better. We're Going to Update Our Original Post in the Next Few Weeks.
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